Romance, Danger, and Tragedy

Short Takes

Books Received

Romance, Danger, and Tragedy
A widow chronicles her marriage and her affection for the Middle East

Come with Me from Lebanon:
An American Family Odyssey
Ann Zwicker Kerr
Syracuse University Press, $28.95
"I wanted to create a lasting record of two losses--of Malcolm and of Lebanon as it once was," writes Ann Zwicker Kerr in the preface of Come with Me from Lebanon: An American Family Odyssey. The wife of Malcolm Kerr '53, who was assassinated in 1984 while serving as president of the American University of Beirut (AUB), has written a love story not only for a man and a place but a time. Come with Me from Lebanon provides a glance backwards into a once peaceful nation and a marriage from a different era.
The chronicle of their happy marriage, which occasionally makes for tedious reading, is saved by what the writer tells us about their extraordinary experiences in Lebanon. During her junior year abroad from Occidental College, Kerr meets her future husband at the AUB, where Malcolm's parents are instructors. They marry in 1956 and have four children, all of whom grow to share their passion for sports, especially tennis and Frisbee (one son now plays basketball for the Chicago Bulls). Throughout their 28-year marriage, the Kerrs spend several years living in the Middle East, with California serving as home base between 1962 and 1982. Malcolm establishes himself as a respected Middle East scholar at UCLA, where he serves first as a professor and then as director of the Von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies. They return to Beirut in 1982 for Malcolm's fateful, brief tenure as president of AUB.
Intertwined with their story is Kerr's love affair with the Middle East. Her descriptions of Beirut and Lebanon give the reader a deeper understanding of the current Arab-Israeli conflict, although the opinions she expresses often seem to be Malcolm's. When she first arrives in 1955, Beirut is bustling and small, with a reputation as "the Paris of the Middle East." Her roommates, both Christian and Muslim, harmoniously share an apartment, but as Kerr becomes more sophisticated, she begins to see the complexity of this "city of uncertain identity." In 1958, after a hiatus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she is shocked by the chaos and the sight of U.S. tanks at the main gates of AUB. When she and her husband return from California in 1982, Lebanon is in the midst of war, and its diverse population has splintered into violent factions.
Living abroad appealed enormously to Kerr, especially the plentiful servants. In Beirut, after the birth of her first child, a housekeeper relieves her from "housewifitis." Later, "freed from household care," she pursues a master's degree in applied linguistics and teaches at the American University of Cairo. When they move to California, she suffers from culture shock. "I did not like being back in the kitchen when I had just discovered a new career and a new stage of life in Cairo," she writes. "Our magnificent house and all its modern appliances were unwanted possessions."
Kerr's first love, however, was for her husband, who was devoted to AUB, on whose campus he had been born and raised. When he decides to accept the presidency, she follows him to war-torn Beirut. Her dedication is admirable. Shells fall constantly around the campus, giving them many terrifying nights, and Malcolm receives death threats. It is clear that Kerr wants to evacuate but remains out of loyalty for her husband. "I was Malcolm's partner in this job, which we had decided to do together, but at that moment it was hard to remember the commitment," she wrote in her journal on August 29, 1983. On January 18, 1984, he is killed. No one is certain who assassinated him, but most people believe it was the work of extremists who wanted to undermine the ties between the U.S. and the Middle East.
Halfway through the book, Kerr recounts a fire that nearly destroyed their California home which she now sees as a metaphor for the devastation she went through following Malcolm's death. "Little by little the intricately curving black trunks and branches that had stood standing in the ash became enveloped by new growth," she writes. "But one had only to look among the leaves to see the blackened stalks and branches that remained at the heart of that new growth, reminders that would not go away."
--Jennifer Gennari Shepherd
Jennifer Gennari Shepherd lives in Natick, Massachusetts, and often writes about women's issues.

Short Takes
How to Find an Apartment
in New York
Karen Spinner '92
City & Company, $12.95 paper
I'm not moving. In fact, after reading Karen Spinner '92's short and sweet, pocket-sized guide to apartment hunting in New York City--the capital of high rents, broker fees, and small square footage--I'm considering asking my landlord for an eternal lease. Finding an apartment in the city that never sleeps is "a considerable challenge," writes Spinner, but remembering my own experience, and that of my friends, I think it's a bit harder than that. If I had had Spinner's helpful book with me, the logistics of my search might have been easier. She provides guidelines for evaluating apartments, screening potential roommates, and dealing with dreaded real-estate brokers. She clearly defines terms such as rent- controlled and rent- stabilized, demystifies co-ops, condos, and sublets, and blithely describes neighborhoods. If only the book could throw in a little luck as well (and unlimited funds), you'd be all set for the search. (It does supply a cute change of address card and housewarming invitation.) So where do I sign?

Arm in Arm: The Political Economy of the Global Arms Trade
William W. Keller '75
BasicBooks, $25
The cold war is over and the United States and former Soviet Union are no longer racing to develop technology to destroy each other. Yet the legacy of that arms race continues to haunt us, according to William W. Keller '75. "What remains, in the aftermath of the cold war, is the steady diffusion of increasingly powerful military technology, and the construction of sophisticated centers of military industry around the globe," he writes in Arm in Arm: The Political Economy of the Global Arms Trade.
Keller's thoughtful and well argued book, based on a study he directed of the global-arms trade for the Office of Technology Assessment, addresses the following questions: Who is supplying and developing powerful military technology? Who is buying this technology and building its arms capability? Why is this proliferation occurring? What's the result?
The answers are neither easy nor comforting. Keller points out that the old paradox of international security still holds: more arms can lead to less security (witness Iraq and Saddam Hussein). What's more troubling is a new challenge of proliferation that Keller introduces: Industrial nations are the principal purveyors of nuclear, biological, and chemical technologies that developing nations can use as weapons of mass destruction. As arms merchants, the western nations support the military industry for economic reasons, but in so doing, undermine international peace and stability.
--Robin L. Michaelson '89
Robin Michaelson is an editor at Macmillan Publishing in New York City.

Books Received
The Secret(s) of Good Patient Care: Thoughts on Medicine
in the 21st Century
William Campbell Felch '42, MD
Greenwood, $49.95

A Short History of Christian Thought (Revised and
Expanded Edition)
Linwood Urban '46
Oxford University Press,
$45 cloth, $18.95 paper

The Poverty of Welfare Reform
Joel F. Handler '54
Yale University Press,
$25 cloth, $12 paper

The Chief Justiceship of
Melville W. Fuller, 1888-1910
James W. Ely, Jr. '59
University of South Carolina Press, $49.95

Hryhorij Savyc Skovoroda: An Anthology of Critical Articles
Thomas E. Bird *65, et al., eds.
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, $44.95

A Catalogue of Paintings in the Folger Shakespeare Library
William L. Pressly '66 *69
Yale University Press, $50

Hospital-Physician Integration: Strategies for Success
C. Thompson Hardy '68 and
Terence M. Murphy
Orders to the American Hospital Association Services, Inc., P.O. Box 92683, Chicago, IL 60675. $57.50

What Are Numbers and What Should They Be?
Richard Dedekind (Henry Pogorzelski *68 et al., eds. and trs.)
Orders to Research Institute for Mathematics, 383 College Avenue, Orono, ME 04473. $49.99

The Medici Wedding of 1589
James M. Saslow '69
Yale University Press, $45

Online Resources for Business: Getting the Information Your Business Needs to Stay Competitive
Alfred Glossbrenner '72 and
John Rosenberg
John Wiley & Sons, $24.95 paper

Babies in Bottles: Twentieth-Century Visions of
Reproductive Technology
Susan Merrill Squier '72
Rutgers University Press,
$48 cloth, $17 paper

Regulatory Takings: Law,
Economics, and Politics
William Fischel *73
Harvard University Press, $45

Writers and Readers in Medieval Italy: Studies in the History of Written Culture
Armando Petrucci (Charles M. Radding *73, ed. and tr.)
Yale University Press, $30

Catullan Provocations: Lyric Poetry and the Drama of Position
William Fitzgerald *81
University of California Press, $45

Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s--Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, Austen
Claudia L. Johnson *81
University of Chicago Press, $34.95 cloth, $14.95 paper

Relics, Apocalypse and the Deceits of History: Ademar of Chabannes, 989-1034
Richard Landes *84
Harvard University Press, $55

Beethoven Hero
Scott Burnham (music professor)
Princeton University Press, $29.95

Understanding China's Economy
Gregory C. Chow (political-economy professor)
World Scientific, Suite 1B, 1060 Main Street, River Edge, NJ 07661. $?? paper

Flesh (architectural monograph)
Elizabeth Diller (architecture professor) and Ricardo Scofidio
Princeton Architectural Press, $34.95

International Monetary Cooperation Since Bretton Woods
Harold James (history professor)
Oxford University Press, $45

Shakespeare, The King's Playwright: Theater in the Stuart Court, 1603-1613
Alvin Kernan (humanities professor, emeritus)
Yale University Press, $27.50

The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France
Philip Nord (history professor)
Harvard University Press, $49.95

Politics as Leadershiip, Revised Edition
Robert C. Tucker (politics professor, emeritus)
University of Missouri Press, $15.95 paper